Saglemi Project: Collins Dauda, four others trial adjourned to Oct. 21
The Saglemi Housing Project was intended to reduce Ghana’s vast housing deficit, by delivering 5,000 housing units.
An Accra High Court has adjourned the trial of former Housing Minister, Collins Dauda and four others in the case regarding the construction of the Saglemi housing units to October 21, 2021.
The case, which was to take off today, October 13, did not happen as administrative procedures required to move the case which was filed at a court presided over by a judge who sat during a vacation to another judge is incomplete.
They are facing a total of 52 charges including intentionally misapplying public property, willfully causing financial loss to the state and issuing false certificates.
They have however pleaded not guilty and already granted bail.
Mr. Dauda, who is the current Member of Parliament for Asutifi South in the Brong Ahafo Region had been accused of altering the original agreement for the Saglemi housing project without recourse to Parliament.
The others involved in the matter are Andrew Clocanas, the executive chairman of Construtora OAS Ghana Limited, the company that executed the project; Kwaku Agyeman-Mensah who was also a Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing from April 2015 to January 2017; Alhaji Ziblim Yakubu was the Chief Director of the Water Resources, Works and Housing Ministry from July 2009 to April 2017 and Nouvi Tetteh Angelo, the majority shareholder of Ridge Management Solutions DWC-LLC.
The Saglemi Housing Project was intended to reduce Ghana’s vast housing deficit, by delivering 5,000 housing units.
However according to former Works and Housing Minister, Samuel Atta-Akyea, who had over the years made the allegation against Mr. Dauda, Parliament passed the agreement in October 2012, the then-minister reviewed the contract, scaling down the number of units to some 1,500 units, and later to 1,024 units after another review in 2016.
The case at the high court seeks to identify why the original output target of the Saglemi project – of 5,000 units at a total cost of $200 million, as stipulated in the financing agreement presented to and approved by Parliament – shrank to 1,502, without a commensurate reduction in the overall loan financing. Only 1,389 housing units have been partly completed.
